persephone rising.

it was bare-boned reality, the coffee so
black & so cold in my paper cup. the
cotton-ball snow in the branches caught my breath,
i ran and i ran and i ran and i ran and ran until

beneath the window in New York you
counted my rib bones with your bare hands
in rooms of mattresses on the floors and i watched
its tears and stains like grit between my teeth. there were
walls and rattling, rusting heaters and your greedy eyes all
peeling off the lace of my bra
undoing what had so delicately been embroidered
in place, so precise, just-so,
thread by thread, bare.


jeans on greedy jeans
a wood floor, a February bedroom, beneath
your window in New York your lips against
my rib as though you could devour it, grind me
like candy between your teeth. cracked and crest-fallen.
chalk dust white. ashes & teeth-chilling snow.
you'd find
i am not hollow.

i pieced my ribs back together that
were strewn about among the empty
beer bottles & dirty socks.

I returned to my Place like fallen snow.

and now, when the road's arms no longer stretch far enough,
the coffee is no longer black enough, the snow
fades from the ground like ancient chalk on aged blackboards,
when the sky's veins begin to stretch and bleed
red again at sunset
i am Persephone rising,
i am weeping away the snow
and my tattered, withered lace.



**

lately, i am searching for answers to questions that I don't even know.
i can feel myself rising into something else.
even the weirdest music isn't weird enough. the spiciest food not spicy enough, the coffee not hot enough, the running and running
and driving and driving not long enough,
the hours too fast.
raw limes and lemon teas and avocados and animal collective and how i can feel
the new heat seeping into the walls, cascading with the sunlight into
the orange walls of the cafe, giving the ice
purpose once again.

in two months, i will have been there for a year.